So, I came across a transcript of the little story about how the Earth got "used up" and abandoned, and it included a few more tidbits that I hadn't heard about before.
For instance, the bit about apparently very fierce acid rain, and then fires that swept the surface after everyone moved on. That makes the Earth of the "Firefly" universe into pretty much nothing more than a dead ball of rock, with nothing left on it and completely uninhabitable.
But here's what got me thinking... considering the huge population that must've been living on the surface in order for the entire ecosystem to be "used up", and considering the relative technology and the size of the spaceships in "Firefly", it seems extremely unlikely that anything close to a complete evacuation of the entire planetary population could've been accomplished within a short time span. And that means that millions, if not billions, of people were abandoned to perish in the chemical cataclysm after everyone else escaped.
That's a really disturbing possibility... but entirely in line with the rest of the "Firefly" universe. The "haves" of Earth manage to escape, leaving the "have-nots" to burn in the mess that the "haves" created in the first place. And once out among the stars, the "haves" create new "have-nots" from among the remaining population. Basically making the same mistakes all over again.
Boy, talk about irony...
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
I think you're taking the figurative language of a puppet show a bit too literally.
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
So a bunch of people get left behind on earth in a horribly chemical wasteland. What if these are the Reavers?
Posted by TheWoozle (Member # 929) on :
It wouldn't take billions of people to build an ark fleet An Earth like that could have had only a few million survivors, which COULD evacuate, given the technology to build starships. Most of the population could have been in suspended animation in some way. In teh show, they have horses, so there was some excess cargo space, past just humanity and neccessities.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
That's rather contradicted by the claim that the Reavers have "gone mad at the edge of space," but that may have just been folk wisdom. I doubt anyone really knows what the Reavers are all about.
Having said that, I'm still fond of the idea that they are all host to an infectious meme complex, like in Snow Crash.
In regards to Earth, it might be fruitful to take a close look at the coastlines visible on one of the planets in the Serenity trailer(s).
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Transporting an arbitrary number of horses requires a small freezer and a healthy understanding of biotechnology, which doesn't seem to be absent from the 'verse.
(With a really healthy understanding, you can do away with the freezer and just bring a few DVDs with assorted useful genomes burnt onto them, and tweak your own offspring into horses when you arrive.)
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
It would take a major catastrophe and probably hundreds, if not thousands of years to make Earth completely inhospitable.
Less than pleasant in realtively short time? Yes. Uninhabitable? I don't think so.
Plus we do adapt. The technology that can build spaceships to withstand the radiations of space, construct moon bases and other artifical stations could surely construct protective domes or other structures on mother Earth.
In addition to transporting every life form off Earth, they would also want to preserve the historical and cultural heritage we've created. All the museums, artifacts, etc...
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
They obviously preserved the Old West just fine.
I seem to recall Alliance cruisers as being immense floating cities. Now, it seems likely that Earth was abandoned at least a couple of hundred years before Firefly (you'd need that long to turn Earth into basically a legend), so they may not have been able to build ships quite as advanced back then, but certainly in the realm.
Sol: I never noticed that Earth was one of the planets in the trailer... I think it would be great for them to visit during the movie. I must watch it again... now
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Well there's two ways of interpreting Earth's appearance in the trailer. Either the movie features a "Lord of the Rings" style prologue, telling a brief the history of the 'verse (wise move if they expect any non-firefly fans to understand a single thing) or they do indeed revisit the Earth That Was...or the Earth that isn't as 'was' as they thought it...was.
As for the puppet show, I get the impression that is wasn't so much of a mass evacuation, more like a gradual emigration (like in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep") where the new terraformed colonies became more desirable places to live than the over poluted and/or irradiated Earth. The final catastrophy seamed to have happened when the planet was deserted and is specifically stated to have happened over the course of a century. It would certainly explain how the horses, cows and rabbits got onto other worlds, they were shipped there ahead of time. The only thing that really bothers me is the timescale, 500 years is a bit tight for all this to happen. Viable interstellar space travel, handheld laser weapons, terraforming other worlds, the buring of the Earth-That-Was, the rise of the two old superpowers into one Alliance and the War of Unification. I suppose it's possible, i'd just be more comfortable with an extra few hundred years.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Exactly my thought, Rev -- 500 years is too short a time scale. I figure that the firestorm mentioned might've been at least 100 years before the show, and certainly the gradual evacuation of Earth could've taken up to 100 years or so. However, even considering that the Alliance cruisers were like "cities" in space, and even considering that people could often be packed like sardines into settler ships, I really doubt that the entire population of Earth could somehow be evacuated.
It's not just a matter of volume of ships; you also need to have food and fuel for the journey, you need to have at least a basic infrastructure on the destination world, and you also need to have a capable infrastructure for getting the people on Earth into the ships in the first place. Somehow, I don't think that'd be possible, at least not to get everyone off the planet.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
You also have to build in time for colonies to develop into entrenched societies. Ariel was a huge metropolis on at least one part of the planet. Some of the other colonies, like the mudder's home, and the place they tried to burn River, seemed to have been around for decades.
Posted by Balaam Xumucane (Member # 419) on :
I was under the impression that the AngloSino conflict was, at least in part, responsible for making Earth a past-tense sort of thing. Chemical warfare? Bioweapons? Nukes? How long does it take to terraform a planet into another earth (however roughly hewn)?
So, er, to 2517 A.D.? You have to build in time for the ships to get old and grimey. Were Firefly class ("class code 03-K64--Firefly") transports built while Earth that was, still was? Her parts had to have time to get old and wear out and be replaced and wear out and get jury-rigged into something that gets the job done. There are plenty of fifty-year-old cars and ships still tooling around our century and none of them have expensive FTL drives.
Also remember also that we don't have a definite point of departure from our own history to the Firefly timeline. I mean, assuming that they do intersect.
Posted by Wraith (Member # 779) on :
quote: I was under the impression that the AngloSino conflict was, at least in part, responsible for making Earth a past-tense sort of thing. Chemical warfare? Bioweapons? Nukes? How long does it take to terraform a planet into another earth (however roughly hewn)?
I didn't think there was an Anglo-Sino conflict but rather just the Alliance. It seemed more that there was a merging of the two prior to the evacuation of Earth; possibly as a result of the collapse of the earth's ecosphere.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Exactly my thought, Rev -- 500 years is too short a time scale. I figure that the firestorm mentioned might've been at least 100 years before the show, and certainly the gradual evacuation of Earth could've taken up to 100 years or so. However, even considering that the Alliance cruisers were like "cities" in space, and even considering that people could often be packed like sardines into settler ships, I really doubt that the entire population of Earth could somehow be evacuated.
Well you have to ask yourself just what the total population of the planet would have been towards the end. If you consider for a second that the Earth is an increasingly dried up, poisoned, possibly irradiated husk, then the people that haven't yet left for the early colonies (potentially the planets that became the "core worlds") would have been very few if you consider that things like sterility, disease, cancer and famine (a toxic environment means a probably dependence on imported food and no resources means no money) would be pretty wide spread. Realistically we may only be talking about a few million people, possibly less, across the whole planet. So a final evacuation could be done, but it'd take about 200 ships with a capacity of no less than 10,000 passengers (sardine style) a piece. So while not being very easy, it would still be possible.
Having said that, remember that the source of this information is a puppet show for children. The real history could be very different. Indeed, if the last inhabitants of Earth were left to burn by the Alliance, I doubt they'd advertise the fact. More likely they'd propagate the myth of the final evacuation and passing of the home world. But that's just ONE possibility. Maybe the Planet was intentionally burned, maybe it wasn't burned at all?
Oh and if you read this part of the transcript, it's pretty clear that the final burn took place after everyone had left.
NARRATOR: Swollen of her, they left. And for the first time since the Great Burn that birthed her, she was alone.
The ships are gone now. A wisp of SMOKE wafts off the sphere, creates a snake of shadow.
NARRATOR: The Earth cried, and terrible were her tears. Acid and caustic, the spawn of the tribes' rape. They flowed a century.
quote:You also have to build in time for colonies to develop into entrenched societies. Ariel was a huge metropolis on at least one part of the planet. Some of the other colonies, like the mudder's home, and the place they tried to burn River, seemed to have been around for decades.
The way I see it, the so called Core Worlds are those first settled by mankind, back when the The-Earth-That-Was was still The-Earth-That-Is, then after the economic decline of the home world, the centre of power shifted to the prospering colonies, leaving Earth to fester and decline on it's own. The when the last people finally left and Earth finally went up like a roman candle, the new Core Worlds began a second wave of colonisation, (which is where the not-so-well-off planets came from) most of which were happily independent until the Chino-American Alliance began to unify control over the rich worlds (something that the well off folk didn't mind at all) and then went on to try the same deal with the outer Planets, which is where the War of Unification comes in. Where in all this the Reavers fit in, I'm not too sure. Perhaps they are the decedents of the very earliest colonists, who pushed out beyond the core worlds (when Earth was still a power) and then "went mad at the edge of space". The rest of humanity would only catch up with them during the expansionist years, after TETW.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
quote:Having said that, remember that the source of this information is a puppet show for children.
For the upper class elite, actually, though few of them appeared to be paying much attention to it. Nevertheless, I agree that the details of the story are likely as stylized as the presentation.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Maybe Earth is actually a pristine paradise and the stories of its being a barren, irratidiated hell-hole are just told to keep people away.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
That thought has crossed my mind.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
Somehow I really don't like that option... for one thing, it completely contradicts the story of "after the Earth got used up". I also think it fits in much better with the "Firefly" story of life being controlled and ultimately nearly ruined by the big corporations and governments.
Besides, what would really be the point of the Earth turning out to be actually okay, after all? Seems to me it really doesn't matter to the plot whatsoever...
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Depends on what the plot of the movie is.
Personally, I think it's going to turn out to be a prologue type thingy, showing the evacuation. I doubt Earth will actually feature at all in the story.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
*spoiler warning*
I read a review of the film (apparantly it's had quite a few test showings already, or was it a leaked script. I forget) that says the film dose indeed start with a prologue, bringing everyone up-to-date from EtW to the Unification Wars and the state of the 'Verse in general. So in all likeyhood, EtW dosen't figure much in the plot.